


spark envy in your irises

by theriveroflight



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Fae & Fairies, Fanfiction of Fanfiction, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:00:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25157383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theriveroflight/pseuds/theriveroflight
Summary: In another world, there is still a happy ending - but the tale's start is far more tragic.(Fanfiction of "Love and Other Fairytales".)
Relationships: Logic | Logan Sanders & Thomas Sanders, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 48
Collections: Everything LAOFT





	spark envy in your irises

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Butterfly People Effect](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21346021) by [SoDoRoses (FairyChess)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FairyChess/pseuds/SoDoRoses). 



> If you have not read LAOFT already (do it!) this will not make sense. You can read it [here](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1111962). 
> 
> This is what I'd like to call a fanon divergence. If you like the term please help it catch on
> 
> I would say that I am sorry, but I'm not sure.
> 
> Title from "Roses/Lotus/Violet/Iris" by Hayley Williams.
> 
> CW: mentions of child harm, minor character death (fanon-typical)

There are many versions of the same universe.

In one universe, Dot Sanders tells a banshee that she is no mother at all, and ends up raising two sons.

But this is not that universe.

There is another where they never get switched in the first place.

But this is not _that_ universe, either.

No, this is the story of a Dot Sanders, who in the moment of truth, cannot bring herself to hurt a child. Hurt _any_ child, faerie or human.

This is the story of Logan Sanders, a changeling child - alone in the world.

This is the story of a no-longer-Thomas human.

***

Logan Sanders grows up lonely, more than anything else. He doesn’t have companionship in this universe, and even though he has never known anything other than the overwhelming loneliness.

His parents are there, but it isn’t the same as having peers, having _friends_ that are your own age. Logan knows that. But everyone steers clear of him. Nobody _wants_ to be friends with him. They all steer clear of him, especially when he proves to always be the most intelligent in the room.

It’s...scary to be simultaneously worshipped and alienated.

Nobody wants to be his friend, and everyone wants him to help them with their homework, or classwork, or _something._

He tends to shut down at school, and just go through it. There’s nothing there for him, after all. Hardly any of them actually care about him. He just needs to _get out._

(No one ever leaves Wickhills. Logan knows this. He wishes to try anyways, which is truly illogical. After all, there is nothing in this town that he wants besides his parents.)

(And if he hears rumors of a brother that never was, he doesn’t listen.)

***

Eirwen is just as terrible a mother as she would have been if she hadn’t left her changeling son. She doesn’t know how to properly care for a _human,_ and he is whisked away before she can eat him.

Even the pixies know better than to eat a human. Not nowadays. It may have been possible, but they do not live in the old times anymore.

The pixies are the ones that save him. They recognized the changeling as Spring, recognize him still even under the human guise.

The child is raised mostly by them, even after Eirwen finds them again. They call him “little bug” and it eventually morphs into something more true than that. Eirwen calls the child “Leith,” but it flows right off of him as the name she would have given the changeling.

It is not Logan’s true name. And it is not the human child’s, either.

He is not “Thomas.” But in a coincidence he still ends up being “Bug” to Logan’s “Berry.”

When he’s old enough to say words, old enough to understand, he tells the fae to call him Leith, and when they laugh and try and spin and manipulate him into giving up something with it he laughs in their faces and tells them that Leith has never been (and never will be) his true name.

He does not tell lies. He is capable of doing so, but he knows that truth is infinitely more valuable - and can serve for deception just as well.

Not many faeries like the banshee. They dislike her decision to adopt a human child. They dislike the human child himself.

And so both of them end up ostracized, abandoned by most.

***

Logan and Patton’s paths still end up colliding similarly. Not many try to physically harm him, but there are...occasions. Logan is _terrified scared paralyzed petrified_ and Patton is _warm safe comfort defense_ and Logan doesn’t fall in love but it’s a near thing.

Logan and Patton are still the first friends to each other. Though Logan suffered through a different type of isolation until that moment, he starts to emerge a bit with Patton.

Patton draws out a part of him that he had so carefully hidden, the part of him that _cared_ about what other people thought of him. The part of him that cared about him being fae. Patton didn’t care about that either, but at least Patton cared about _him._ And so it was.

Logan, in all universes, retains his intelligence, and is still in that same honors class when Roman goes to school for the first time. There is still an empty desk to his right, a desk no one wants to fill when it means being in a position that makes it _obvious_ that they’ll talk to him, even if the “behind” spot is coveted for cheating purposes.

Roman still gets lost, still turns up late that first day. And he still doesn’t know of Logan, still has no reason to hate him, to want to isolate him like they have.

Logan feels the repression unwinding within him that he’s kept for so long.

(After all, without Thomas, he had to find other ways to cope. Other ways to deal with the constant noise of the human world, to deal with the _everything_ that goes on. Logan is not as prone to going off, to exploding.)

(But that is because there is a constant simmer in his bones that he clamps down on, that he refuses to let out.)

They tell him that _it’s okay to ask for help._

And that is the most important lesson that Logan Sanders has ever needed to learn.

***

Bug stays away from the revels, away from the other fae that are not the unmother of Eirwen or the pixies that have raised him.

Sometimes he’s forced to stay on the very edges. He refuses to let himself get drawn in, and he knows how to fight for control of himself.

***

Logan feels a spinning compulsion binding him.

(In this story, Eirwen has a child that doesn’t want her, a wild teenager with the heart of a human and the standoffishness of a pixie.)

(In this story, she still seeks to have control, and so she spins that impulse. Blood still holds water, and a mother-child relationship has more pull than any other besides those of siblings.)

He feels distant, out of his body. There is no good reason that he would go out on a full moon. Even safe from _some_ of the side effects of the land, revels...revels are overseen by the Serpent King, typically - and he does not like the concept of a ruler of snakes, known for deception even juxtaposed against the honesty of the fae.

When he arrives at the revel, he feels more in control of his actions, though he cannot turn back. Turning back is an impossibility, but he can do more.

The fae still fuss over him, still ask how he’s been mistreated in the human world, but they keep him away from one particularly shadowed corner.

They keep him away, but he still manages to find his way over after they start to leave him alone.

“Oh,” Logan breathes.

It’s like looking into a mirror.

A mirror, but instead of showing you who you are it shows the person that you could be.

There’s...Thomas? Not-Thomas, the human who could have been Thomas if they hadn’t been switched.

“You are...the one who replaced me.” His words come out gravelly, almost as though he doesn’t use his voice often - which makes sense.

“Not replaced. You may call me Specs.”

“You may call me…” the human hesitates, thinking. “Flow.”

“Flow. It is...good to finally see you.” And he _cannot_ tell a lie, so it must be true. Right?

“What’s it like?” Logan assumes that he’s talking about the human world.

“It was lonely for me. But I think that you could enjoy it. I do not know you.” (As much as Logan _wishes_ he did. He recognizes that them knowing each other is a statistical anomaly, but sometimes he longs for it anyways.)

“I have wondered what it would have been like,” Flow replies. “I would not trade my family for anything, but perhaps it would be nice to live in a world that wants me to be in it.”

“Rather than be stuck in the...opposing one.” He doesn’t say _wrong,_ because he has Patton and Roman and his parents and he feels like he belongs _more_ in the human world than in this world of fantasy and starlight.

“Yes.”

They understand each other, like no one else could for either of them.

***

The changeling is like looking at a twisted version of his reflection.

They talk, and Bug realizes - this faerie, meant to be like him without _being_ him, is the only one who understands what it’s like to want to be a part of both worlds.

He doesn’t want to abandon one family for another. He doesn’t want to abandon the pixies and nymphs and other nature spirits that raised him, but he wants to know what it could have been like.

***

Eirwen is _more_ determined here. She wants someone that she can control. She failed with Bug, she refuses to fail with the child that she had abandoned.

(There is an obvious logical fallacy here.)

And Logan refuses, even without a brother to stay for. He has his parents, and Patton and Roman, and he loves all of them and he _refuses._

Eirwen makes him pay for his refusal.

Three warnings. And he can’t leave Wickhills.

He may have wanted to when he was more alone, but it isn’t even a _possibility_ anymore.

***

He starts to come to revels more often, to get to know his...duplicate? There’s still no _good_ way to call the changeling.

Bug sees the king’s new companion, another human. He’s scared to approach him -- mostly because he’s the Serpent King’s, and possession is important to faeries (and by extension, him). He doesn’t mess with others’ possessions. No matter how he feels about the person possessing them.

It isn’t until the companion shows up with Specs that he gets _interested._

“Hey,” he growls at someone he doesn’t know. A warning.

The knight doesn’t back away. “The pair of you...well, the king wants his--”

And Bug’s duplicate _snarls_ protectively and he thinks a resounding _oh._

“It’s okay,” the companion says.

“Be careful,” Specs answers.

The knight takes the king’s companion away.

“So. You know the companion?”

“I did not know,” the changeling answers plainly. “He is my friend, in the daytime. I didn’t _know_ about that. I want to know what he’s keeping from me. What binds him to the Serpent King.”

“I have seen him sometimes at night hunting,” Bug tells him. “He is a knight here.”

“Truthfully?”

“I would not lie. Though I am capable of it, I don’t.” He hasn’t. It would be naive to say that he _never_ would, but he doesn’t need to.

They go to a quieter corner.

“You can refer to me as Logan,” Logan says, a bit more soft in case there are any eavesdroppers around them. “It is closer to my true name than what I have asked you to call me.”

“Bug.” Logan looks at him strangely. “It is what my family calls me.”

“You consider me part of your family?”

“I wish to.”

Logan nods, and a few flowers pop up underneath their feet.

“I should find...the knight.”

“Is there something I should call him?”

“Red.” It’s clear that Logan has thought it up on the spot, but that is worthy of something.

“You should.”

“I will see you again.”

“Twenty-eight days.”

Their traditional exit. It’s twenty-eight days between full moons, when they can see each other.

Logan walks off to find Red. He seems as though he loves Red, and Bug does not understand why Red is entangled with the Serpent King anymore.

***

Bringing Roman is a _mistake,_ and as he talks to Flow he realizes the true magnitude of it.

Bug. Logan has been brought into Bug’s family, and he suspects that it will have some other consequences down the line.

But Roman has somehow become a knight to the Serpent King, of all things, and doesn’t Roman know that it’s _dangerous?_ What could possibly be the reward for his actions? What did Roman decide cost part of his life?

And when Roman becomes enchanted by one of them…

It’s terrifying.

***

“That nickname they call him, Snowmelt…” he asks one of the nymphs one day, one connected to a sycamore tree. “...that isn’t really accurate, is it?”

“Why do you ask, Bug?”

“I told him that he could call me Bug, and part of his response involved flowers blooming in the ground.”

Sycamore frowns. “Definitely not a Winter, then. Not like his mother.”

“They all seem to think that he is,” he comments. “I don’t know how, because looking back it seems obvious.”

“It sometimes happens that a child belongs to a different court from their parent, but normally that court is the same ‘type.’ The child of an Autumn is typically that or Winter, for instance.”

“That’s interesting.”

“The changeling is very strange.” The nymph leans back against xyr tree. “I admire your efforts to understand him.”

“I feel as though I am looking into a mirror when I see him,” Bug confesses. “There was no choice involved.”

“There is always a choice, little bug,” xe says. “Always.”

***

The monster finds them. The monster finds them and Patton, when he is unable to enter his own home.

He meets Virgil -- the prince from the coffin. How was he awake? How did Patton find him?

Logan has a lot of questions (which is fairly normal).

There is no time for answers (which is not).

He confesses his curse to Desdemona, and he pieces it together -- Roman has made a deal that has _already_ cost him.

And Logan is who he made it for. It is not worth it. _He_ is not worth that.

Everyone…wants him to go. They always have, Logan knows.

And even with them protecting him _(Virgil,_ and how he scares them into submission but _never_ Logan; Roman, who made the stupidest decision of their collective lives for him; Patton, who was his first friend his age), he still feels exceptionally vulnerable.

The adults talk about him as though he isn’t even in the room.

He volunteers.

If they want him to leave...he _could_ survive there. He and Bug would find a way.

But that means abandoning Patton and Roman and his parents and it...is strange to lump them all together. And it means abandoning his hopes of learning more, of leaving (however impossible it is).

They fight for him to stay.

And when his mom yells that he won’t be leaving unless he truly wants to, he understands.

And then the monster comes.

The not-really-a-monster, the…remnant.

Patton ends up getting her to calm down, just a bit. Enough to tell them _something._

***

Bug knows how to listen for whispers. The forest hums underneath his feet, if he listens for it. The whispers of the trees and the plants are easy to listen for if one is attuned to hearing it.

Snippets about a monster that belongs to the King.

The forest’s humming...it sounds less dissonant than normal. There is still an unsettling nature to it, but it's a little more harmonious.

Something has changed.

He should find Logan.

***

Spring.

Not Winter, not powerless.

And the forest is off.

He feels the spark between them, Roman's idealism catching fire for once.

***

A hunt.

He cannot follow - he is not fast enough, but he knows a few shortcuts to the human world. He pants as he arrives to find Red -- more Companion than Logan’s.

He watches them, the way that Companion Red acts around them and the way that they all seem to love each other.

The hunt comes for them, and he is scared for them. They are not here for him, the little bug hiding in the bushes.

He hears them talk of rebellion and he understands the forest’s resolved harmony now. The rightful ruler is awake.

His family will be pleased to know that. None of them _like_ the Serpent.

***

A coup. It still feels surreal, as though he isn't there with them.

Logan catches a glimpse of Bug in the trees.

After this is over, he should introduce Bug to his parents. They deserve to know that their child lived in some form.

Logan feels _consumed_ with hatred for the snake on the throne, taking Roman as though he belongs to him--

And then the remnant, _Greta,_ is loose upon the court. The massacre is horrifying, the way some seem to pop out of existence, with some left unconscious like at the school, like with the parents.

Roman makes a break for it. Virgil shatters the ring. Greta takes her vengeance.

And their greatest enemy is defeated.

***

The forest still sounds dissonant. But there is even more resolution to its hum. He can only hope that Logan was successful.

The Lord of the Forest (he _knows_ now, of a prince that was put to sleep a century ago…) and Logan are here.

He embraces Logan. “I heard what happened to some of the ones here. I was scared that you had met the same fate, and they would not have mentioned it because you bear no relevance to them.”

“I did not.”

The other one looks between them. “I presume you’re the human counterpart.”

“Yes.” Bug nods. “You may call me Beetle.” He switches between names, uses something closer to true for him because if Logan trusts him then there must be something - and the fact that his awakening made the forest sound less dissonant means something too.

“Vee.”

He gets his family to know that even if _they_ don't trust Vee, he trusts Logan and Logan trusts him, and they all know that Logan is the strongest Spring in a long time.

Vee thanks him later, for help in getting the “more unruly” Seelie to trust in him and his rule over the forest. Not enough of them remember what it was like before, apparently.

He tells Vee that a century is a long time, but that he and Logan have a longer time to right the Serpent’s wrongs.

***

“Bug, there are two people I want you to meet,” Logan tells him. “In Wickhills. My parents.”

He does not say _our_ because that is a lie. Dot and Larry Sanders are not Bug’s parents, just as Eirwen is not Logan’s mother.

“Okay.”

They walk, slowly, and Logan tells Bug about them, that they are the only ones who loved him for too long.

Bug _apologizes,_ as though it is his fault. They arrive at the door. Logan opens it, and Bug carefully follows him in.

“Logan, who did you--” Mom cuts herself off as she turns around. “Thomas?”

“That is not my name,” Bug answers.

“Yes, yes, I apologize, dear. What may I call you?”

“Bug,” he answers. Logan looks between them. “That is my name.”

Though it isn’t the same, the ending here is close-to-happy in a different way.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, Vi, for writing such an excellent series.


End file.
